Saturday, November 07, 2009

Yesterday, I received a disc from Netflix finally allowing streaming content on my PS.

Interestingly, the feature seems to actually run off the CD they send. It doesn't appear to install anything on the PS3. I put the disc in and selected it under the "video" section of the menus. It popped up with a code to go to the website and type in - I guess you have to use a computer for that, not the PS3 browser.

When I went to the Netflix site there was a link right on the front to activate the device with the code. I put the code in and it said it might take a few minutes, but when I walked back to the PS3, it was already displaying movie choices. Apparently my on-demand queue is already populated with every movie I've ever gotten that was also available on demand.

Anyway, it's about as painless it could be. The interface is very simular to what I've seen on a Roku. The video quality was pretty poor though on the one thing I watched. There is an "HD" icon under selections that are supposed to be high definition, but the selection I tried was still very highly compressed. I hope that I simply picked a poor example, or that this improves over time. Regardly, I'm glad to finally have this feature!

I attended this school from 4th through 8th grade. I also went there for kindergarten. First through 3rd grades where at a school down the road a bit, no longer standing.

As the historic assessment notes, the Markham school, named for the poet Edwin Markham, is shaped like an 'H'. The reason for this is that it was built at the height of the cold war to serve as a field hospital in the event of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

Really.

This is also the reason it's built of brick, and the reason it has ramps instead of stairs throughout the split-level floor plan. I doubt they are there now, but I recall the large circles painted on the paved playground surfaces behind the building, with X marks in the center. These were of course handy for playground games. They were helicopter landing pads.